PHILADELPHIA — She will never be a poet. But when she accepted her party’s nomination for president with “humility, determination, and boundless confidence in America's promise” last night, Hillary Rodham Clinton nevertheless wrote the beginning of an eloquent new chapter in the nation’s song of itself. Deftly and directly filleting Donald Trump’s boast that he alone can solve America’s problems, Clinton invoked the country’s motto (“out of many, we are one”), and the first person plural of its founding creeds, to argue that the United States has always been strongest when it puts “we” first and works together.

“It's not just a slogan for our campaign,” Clinton told the cheering delegates in the Wells Fargo Center on the last night of a crisp and cohesive Democratic Convention that stood in stark contrast to the Republicans’ dark and dystopian conclave in Cleveland last week. “It’s a guiding principle for the country we’ve always been and the future we’re going to build.”

Clinton sometimes had to pause to accommodate the chants of “Hillary, Hillary, Hillary!” that her supporters mounted to counter periodic but persistent catcalls from pockets of disappointed Bernie Sanders supporters wearing Day-Glo yellow T-shirts in the hall. But nothing could mar or minimize the moment when she acknowledged her pride at becoming the first female nominee of a major American political party—and the response was deafening and electric. “Standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come,” Clinton said, wearing roughly the same resplendent shade of white that Geraldine Ferraro wore when she became the first woman to win the party’s vice presidential nomination 32 years ago. “Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. I’m happy for boys and men, because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. After all, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”

It’s notoriously difficult to judge the impact of a convention in the moments after the last balloons have popped and the last confetti has fallen, with the sulfurous smell of concert-style pyrotechnics still lingering in the air. But as the delegates flocked out and the cleaning crews filed in, Clinton’s optimism seemed justified.

These four days in Philadelphia were variously and vividly awash in the presence of flags, patriotism, and military and police officers—and the unabashed invocations of the divine that would be much more typical of a G.O.P. convention but were sometimes so notably absent in Trump’s one-man show in Cleveland.

It should hurt Clinton not a whit that some Sanders supporters greeted Ret. Marine Gen. John Allen’s endorsement of her with non sequitur chants of “No more war!” What more likely made swing voters at home sit up and listen was Allen’s ringing declaration that, under Clinton, “our international relations will not be reduced to a business transaction” and “our armed forces will not become an instrument of torture, and they will not be engaged in murder, or carry out other illegal activities.”

Indeed, the inescapable impression was that Trump’s relentless and erratic egotism in Cleveland—and his surreal appeals for Russian hackers to uncover Clinton’s missing emails in the days since—had teed up the Democrats’ sober, steady counter-argument. It was Trump himself, with his “I alone can fix it” rhetoric, who enabled Clinton (and speaker after speaker) to make the point that “It Takes A Village” is much more than the glibly uplifting title of her 1996 campaign book. It is an American trait as baked-in as a barn-raising, and a thread that makes coherent sense of Clinton’s own ambitious and accomplished life.

“Now, sometimes the people at this podium are new to the national stage,” Clinton told the delegates, implicitly acknowledging that many voters see her long years as First Lady (of Arkansas and the United States), senator, and secretary of state as a distinct liability at a moment when the electorate has demonstrated its affection for fresh political faces, especially choleric ones. “As you know, I’m not one of those people.”

But, she went on, “My job titles only tell you what I’ve done. They don’t tell you why. The truth is, through all these years of public service, the service part has always come easier to me than the public part. I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me.”

In other hands, such an assertion might sound a note of Eddie Haskell or Uriah Heap (“My flaw is that I just care too much”). Some of her most loyal supporters grant that Clinton is, in fact, notable for her unwillingness to imagine that anyone could ever find her motives less than pure.

But the former First Lady who would be commander in chief did not gush or flush. Her voice never cracked and her lip never trembled. If her eyes shone, I couldn’t tell it from the press stands. Not for her is the moist, confessional style in American politics that her husband perfected in two terms as president. Her recitation of her resumé—improving educational opportunities for children, expanding access to health care for children, and carrying the country’s highest ideals abroad as secretary of state—sought to make her wonkiness into a winning quality. “It’s true, I sweat the details of policy, whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs,” she acknowledged, somehow sounding so much more measured (and less scolding) in the packed arena than she usually does on TV. “Because it's not just a detail if it's your kid—if it’s your family, it’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president, too.”

Or as her friend the actor Ted Danson put it earlier in the evening, “Anybody can brag, anybody can talk. Hers is the poetry of doing.”

There is no denying that Clinton is making a notoriously difficult ask of the voters: to grant her not only the third term that Barack Obama is constitutionally forbidden from seeking, but the one that her husband might well have won 16 years ago had he not faced the same bar.

Despite the Democrats’ built-in demographic advantages in November—an electorate that is growing younger and more diverse with every passing day—and job approval ratings for Obama above 50 percent (historically an electoral advantage for the incumbent party), Clinton faces still faces some strong headwinds.

Looking back, one longtime Clinton aide I saw this week said it was almost inevitable that the combination of last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding gay marriage nationwide; the Pentagon’s announcement that it would allow transgender troops to serve openly; and the lowering of the Confederate battle flag across the South in the wake of the Charleston church shootings would prompt the sort of angry backlash that an authoritarian Trump has exploited. And more than one graying Clintonista also expressed surprise—and trepidation—that the populist Sanders revolution had pushed the Democratic Party well to the left of the third-way centrism that Bill Clinton had persuasively argued was the way to win elections in a country that remains closely divided.

Clinton is not the ideally adaptable candidate to confront either challenge. But she and her skilled team of strategists, image-meisters, and brass-tacks technicians certainly gave it their best shot this week. In his robust and unstinting blessing of Clinton on Wednesday night, Obama acknowledged that nothing can ever truly prepare a presidential candidate for the demands of the Oval Office. “You can read about it,” he said. “You can study it. But until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis, or send young people to war. But Hillary has been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions. She knows what’s at stake in the decisions our government makes—what’s at stake for the working family, for the senior citizen or the small business owner, for the soldier, for the veteran. And even in the midst of crisis, she listens to people, and she keeps her cool, and she treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds, no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.”

Twenty-eight years ago, another wearyingly familiar yet too-little-understood politician sought to preserve and extend the legacy of the charismatic, transformative two-term president he’d served. His name was George Herbert Walker Bush, and at the Republican Convention in New Orleans, he made a case for himself—to be Ronald Reagan’s successor—that turned out to be compelling in the fall. “I know that what it all comes down to, this election—what it all comes down to, after all the shouting and the cheers—is the man at the desk,” Bush said then. “And who should sit at that desk? My friends, I am that man. I say it without boast or bravado. I’ve fought for my country, I’ve served, I’ve built, and I’ll go from the hills to the hollows, from the cities to the suburbs to the loneliest town on the quietest street to take our message of hope and growth for every American to every American.”

Hillary Clinton didn’t say it in so many words last night, but the message her proud and measured tone conveyed was, “I am that woman.” Donald Trump had better be prepared to hear her roar.

Alabama: Joe L. Reed, 77

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Alaska: Genevive Mina

Could you explain your jacket?

I’m wearing a Kuspuk; it’s a traditional Alaskan jacket that they wear in the wintertime, so we made a summer version. It’s held up in the heat—it’s cotton and has this beautiful bric-brac trim. It’s gorgeous.

Ironic that you’re wearing this jacket when you’re from a state that’s the most impacted by climate change.

Exactly, I know. Our summers have gotten hotter and hotter every year. We’ve gotten less and less snow. A couple weeks ago, Fairbanks, Alaska was hotter than New York City. I don’t remember exactly how hot it was, but it was, like, mid-90s.

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Arizona: Jonathan Nez, 41

How has it been being a delegate in what seems to be the eye of the storm of issues in this election?

There’s a lot of excitement this election. Arizona is a battleground state. It’s always been leaning red, but it’s starting to turn around. We have an exciting race where our very own congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick—Congressional District 1, from the Navajo nation—is running against the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, John McCain. We are mobilizing throughout Arizona; all of the delegates here are pushing many of our Democratic candidates to win.

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Arkansas: Jason Henry, 39

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

West Virginia: Elaine Harris, 61

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Wisconsin: Gary Hawley

I’ve been a Hillary delegate from the very beginning.

Do you think Bernie’s contributions to the race have brought people into the Hillary fold?

Oh absolutely. He’s brought a lot of things up in the issues. We brought ’em up, and we put a lot of them in the platform. Not all of them, but we got 90 percent, so I’m happy.

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Wyoming: Ken Chestek, 63

Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Alabama: Joe L. Reed, 77

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Alaska: Genevive Mina

Could you explain your jacket?

I’m wearing a Kuspuk; it’s a traditional Alaskan jacket that they wear in the wintertime, so we made a summer version. It’s held up in the heat—it’s cotton and has this beautiful bric-brac trim. It’s gorgeous.

Ironic that you’re wearing this jacket when you’re from a state that’s the most impacted by climate change.

Exactly, I know. Our summers have gotten hotter and hotter every year. We’ve gotten less and less snow. A couple weeks ago, Fairbanks, Alaska was hotter than New York City. I don’t remember exactly how hot it was, but it was, like, mid-90s.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Arizona: Jonathan Nez, 41

How has it been being a delegate in what seems to be the eye of the storm of issues in this election?

There’s a lot of excitement this election. Arizona is a battleground state. It’s always been leaning red, but it’s starting to turn around. We have an exciting race where our very own congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick—Congressional District 1, from the Navajo nation—is running against the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, John McCain. We are mobilizing throughout Arizona; all of the delegates here are pushing many of our Democratic candidates to win.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Arkansas: Jason Henry, 39

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

California: Inder Pahwa

What do you think of Donald trump?

He’s not acceptable. He’s not even acceptable to people in his own party. People who find him unacceptable, they should come with us.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Colorado: Sheila Lieder

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Conneticut: Mike Cacace, 64

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Delaware: Bob Gilligan, 74

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Florida: Tony Silva

“That was very good for Bernie to do, but some of his people . . . I don’t know if you saw our delegation, but there are a lot of rows missing. Three rows. I’m not supposed to really dwell on that, because they said that the media’s going to try to make a big deal of it.”

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Georgia: Ben Myers, 71

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Hawaii: Dolly Strazar, 71

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Idaho: Bert Marley, 68

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Illinois: Lou Lang, 66

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Indiana: Baron Hill

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Iowa: Ako Abdul-Samad, 65

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Kansas: Kelli Snyder, 31

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Kentucky: Jerry Lundergan, 69

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Louisiana: Bishop Rodney McFarland Sr.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Maine: Former State Senator Phil Bartlett, 39

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Maryland: Peter Franchot, 68

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Massachusetts: Kyera Sterling, 23

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Michigan: Mayor Karen Weaver of Flint

How much emphasis will the Clinton campaign put on Flint throughout the rest of the election?

They’re using this platform to talk about the issues that we just talked about, because there are hundreds of Flints across the country. And if we don’t pay attention to these issues in terms of infrastructure, water quality, and environmental injustices, all of these places will experience what Flint is going through.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Minnesota: Delia Jurek, 70

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Mississippi: Cureley Clark

I have to ask about the shirt.

I’m with the NAACP, and I’m here as a delegate for Hillary Clinton. One of the strong issues in Mississippi is the Confederate flag, because we feel like it symbolizes hate. It’s currently part of the state flag, and we are of the opinion that the flag should be changed, or if it’s being flown, it should be taken down. I was happy to find that that position was taken here. There was a demonstration to have that flag taken down here in Philadelphia, and it was successful here, and that flag was taken down. We’re trying to get the flag down in the state of Mississippi, and we’re hoping to get that conversation to the national forefront.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Missouri: Rachel Gonzalez, 17

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Montana: Nick Lockridge, 35

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Nebraska: Frank LaMere, 66

“I am very much alarmed, as are all of the Native [American] delegates, and most of the delegates from around the country. [Trump’s] use of very racist terminology, especially with his reference to our women, bothers all of us. It bothers me, particularly. And I am going to work hard to defeat this bully, harder than I have ever worked, in any campaign over many years. Interestingly enough, this is my eighth national convention. I have been here every convention since 1988—35 to 40 nights—and I have never been as moved as what I saw last night, and I have never had more resolve than I have right now about defeating this bully Donald Trump. Indian Country has to take our rightful place in this process, and we have to complement the efforts of the Democratic party, and we have to get the job done.”

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Nevada: Nelson Araujo, 28

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

New Hampshire: William Shaheen

Are you related to [New Hampshire Senator] Jeanne Shaheen?

She’s my wife. I’m a superdelegate.

Can I assume that you’re a Hillary supporter?

I’ve been supporting Hillary since 2008, and I’m still supporting her.

What’s it like being married to Jeanne Shaheen?

Well, you’re going to have to ask her what it’s like being married to Bill Shaheen! I’m kidding. We’ve been married 47 years. It’s been great.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

New Jersey: Bill Pascrall III, 51

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

New Mexico: Seamus Berkeley

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

New York: Elizabeth Yeampierre

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

North Carolina: Marc Friedland, 67

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

North Dakota: Kylie Oversen, 27

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Ohio: Louise Buchanan, 62

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Oklahoma: Senator Anastasia Pittman, 46

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Oregon: Kevin Hunt, 58

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Pennsylvania: John Hellmann III, 64

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Rhode Island: James Diossa, 30

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

South Carolina: Richard Johnson, Jr.

It’s safe to say that you’re a lifelong delegate.

I have worked for the election of every Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson. This is my fourth national convention.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

South Dakota: Rick Weiland, 58

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Tennessee: Nathaniel Bone, 20

Wow, you’re a very young delegate. How did you become a delegate at such a young age?

I was very inspired by what Bernie Sanders was talking about, and when I was of age to be a delegate, I was very inspired and decided to run.

Have you decided to support Hillary?

Yes I have. I prefer Bernie, but I’m still a democrat at the end of the day, so I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Texas: Richard Gonzalez, 63

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Utah: Sheila Roboy

There’s probably a lot of resistance in Utah to get people excited for Hillary. How hard has it been trying to convince your fellow Utahans that Donald Trump is not the candidate for them?

They know that. Totally know that. As a matter of fact, Utah is now being looked at as a swing state. And the reason is, it’s because of Trump. Though a lot more of the Republican people are looking toward the Libertarian candidate, and some—very few—looking toward Jill Stein. There are a few months before the actual election, in which people are going to analyze, really, who more represents their values. And I think that Hillary, by being more religious—and they are a religious state—will appeal more to the Mormon base.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Vermont: Martha Allen

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Virginia: Sue Langley, 67

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Washington: Germaine Kornegay, 46

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

West Virginia: Elaine Harris, 61

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Wisconsin: Gary Hawley

I’ve been a Hillary delegate from the very beginning.

Do you think Bernie’s contributions to the race have brought people into the Hillary fold?

Oh absolutely. He’s brought a lot of things up in the issues. We brought ’em up, and we put a lot of them in the platform. Not all of them, but we got 90 percent, so I’m happy.